As It Should BeAs It Will Always Be
by the.eye.does.not.SEE
Summary: Peter's thoughts a few months after Olivia returns to their world.


Author's Note: Just a little Peter Bishop drabble…I was going to try and fit this into a story, but I feel like publishing it as a small one-shot. :) Hope you like it.

Peter stood, his hands in his pockets, surveying the lab as his father and Astrid worked in relative silence. _That's one blessing for today, I suppose,_ Peter thinks._ It's rare that Walter ever works in silence._ Even at Massive Dynamic, he always has old records blasting, filling the room with noise. But here, it's quiet. Maybe that's why Walter wanted to work on the case here and not in Bell's lab. He, like Peter, probably felt this case hit a little too close to home.

And as it should.

Two boys were kidnapped six years ago, when they were barely three years old, and planted into welcoming, yet alien, families to live out their lives. That is, until, they'd met their untimely ends on the way home from school. _Sound familiar? _Peter thinks cheekily, his eyes following his father's movements. Walter hadn't spoken to Peter about the case, but from his unusual silence, Peter knew it was hanging on Walter as well.

_ As it should._

While Peter leans against the railing, watching the two work, his mind wanders. It wanders down that same, well-worn path it's travelled hundreds of times a day in the past couple months. _Olivia. _Just as usual, he thought back to their first case together-their first meeting. Him, a recluse semi-criminal; she, a no-nonsense government cop. A smiled curved at the edges of his lips unintentionally. _Call me sweetheart one more time, I'd really like that. _That was one of the things he'd always liked about her. She could give as good as she got. After a couple weeks, he'd learned she'd been like that since she was a child. She could give as good as she could get, but within reason. Within the law, within her own moral code.

Peter exhales softly, the smile falling off his face. _The beginning. _How he wished they could go back to that. Back to the times when all they were were semi-partners, solving weird cases, leading Walter from body to body. This, what was happening now, was so much worse.It was worse than going back to the beginning. If going back to the beginning meant simply working together out of necessity-out of _blackmail, _actually_-_then, yes, that's what they were…But now there was so much more. Now there was hatred. Now there was betrayal. Now there was heartbreak and regret.

Peter _wished _they had gone back to the beginning. He wished they could all go back in time and start all over again. Then maybe he'd be able to look her in the eye. Then maybe he'd be able to simply walk into a room rather than surveying it for minutes at a time to make sure she either was or wasn't there. And he never knew if he wanted her around.

Who was he kidding-of course he _wanted _her around…But at what cost? Did he want her around just so he could look into her tortured eyes, seeing through her polite mask to her true, secretly devastated, feelings? Did he want her around just so he could push their sadistic game of love and pain as far as it could go?

Or did he just want her around because he was selfish?

That's what it all came down to in the end, didn't it?

_Selfishness. _Deep down, though Peter didn't want to admit it, selfish was one thing he had always been. Now, it was one thing he was sure he would always be. He'd left home-abandoning his mother and his father at a time when they both needed him more than ever. For a while, he'd tried to turn his life around, to be dependable, to help others before himself. He worked to convince himself that he wasn't selfish. He'd taken slow and reluctant steps with Walter, even getting to the point of calling him 'Dad.' _Like that'll ever happen again_, Peter thinks ruefully. He'd worked with the FBI, putting aside his con-man motives and actually listening to what Broyles and Charlie Francis had to say. He'd helped out Astrid; god knows no one could survive alone, ten hours a day, with Walter.

But most of all, Peter thought he was a good guy in the way he'd handled things with Olivia. Obviously, he wasn't in love with her in the beginning. Sure, she was pretty-beautiful, even-but she was tormented by her partner, her boyfriend-the man who had betrayed his job, his country…And her.

Peter knew from that moment that he realized he wanted to be something _a bit more_ than friends with Olivia that he couldn't be like John Scott. Peter knew he'd never betray his job (he didn't really have one) and he'd never betray his country (did he have one of those, either?)…And he thought he knew himself well enough to say with utmost confidence that he would never betray her, not in any sense of the word.

But he was wrong. He'd betrayed her in too many ways to count. Maybe just being with the wrong Olivia would be enough, but he'd turned his back on her. He'd turned his back on her and on their world, and without a second thought, he'd left them all and followed Walternate to his birth world. He'd turned his back on his real father, his real _family_, in favor of his surrogates. Worst of all, he'd betrayed her in the worst way that a person can be betrayed. If was another woman, it might be the tiniest bit forgivable-not that he ever would intentionally cheat on her, much less with another woman-but it was _her_. It wasn't Olivia. And he knew. Somewhere, deep in the darkest recesses of his mind, body, and soul, he knew it _wasn't her_. He just wasn't willing to give up the fantasy yet. He wasn't ready to give up the one happiness he'd found, the one peace.

It's a rare moment in Peter Bishop's life that things are ever peaceful. He used to think life was untroubled back before Walter was in the institution, back in his childhood he couldn't remember…But just like everything else, it was a lie. His life may have been peaceful on the Other Side, but he'll never know. And he doesn't want to.

After finding out everything that happened to Olivia, Peter knows, now more than ever, that this is his world. It may not be his birth world, he may not _belong _here…But he knows that sometimes home isn't a place.

Sometimes it's a person.

And as unwilling as Olivia was to be his person, he couldn't stop thinking of her that way. Every time he saw her, be it from far away or from mere feet separating them…He knew that it was her he was supposed to be with.

If only he could convince Olivia of this...

"You okay?"

Peter glances over, snapped out of his thoughts, surprised to see the woman he was thinking about standing just a foot away from him. "Huh?"

"I asked if you were okay." She looks at him quizzically. "What's up with you? You've been acting distant all week. Is it the case?" She asks, gesturing to the young bodies on Walter's table.

"No," he shakes his head. "It's not the case."

"Well, all right then. We should go."

"Yeah." He doesn't move, though, opting instead to watch her walk away, just as he has many times before. Is that all he'll even get out of her? The sight of her retreating form, walking into the distance-into the future-without him?

Peter sighs, running a hand through his hair, and follows after her.

He always will.

Review and tell me what you think!


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